As a result of various medical procedures, it is often necessary and desired to have repeated and frequent access to a patient's circulation system for the delivery of blood and intravenous solutions. Apparatuses and procedures have been developed to allow such access while avoiding repeated venipuncture by using various types of catheters.
One type catheter is the tunneled central venous catheter, such as the Hickman indwelling atrial catheter designed many years ago by Robert O. Hickman. The Hickman catheter provides ready access to the patient's circulation both for drawing blood and for administering drugs, blood products and total paranterol nutrition. The use of the catheter can also provide added comfort to patients wherein outpatients can be sent home with the catheter in place for later follow-up use.
The catheter is basically comprised of a long tube which is inserted into a central vein inside the patient's chest. The tube then extends from the vein to outside of the patient's chest where a coupling is attached to the outside end of the tube. The external end of the coupling is threaded and has a port through which injections or transfusions can be administered directly, allowing less chance of contamination and air embolism.
The Hickman catheter is available in single and multiple lumen catheter configurations wherein the multiple lumen models are comprised of two or more couplings that are attached to the insertion tube. Since the multiple lumen models have two or more couplings attached to the end of the tube, they are somewhat heavier than the single lumen Hickman catheter, however these multiple lumen catheters are extremely popular with physicians since drugs, such as those used in chemotherapy, can be administered through one coupling while blood or paranterol nutrition can be administered through the other coupling at the same time.
When using either the single or multiple lumen catheter, the catheter is implanted inside the patient and as such may remain implanted for months at a time. The free end of the catheter extending outwardly from the patient's body often causes problems for the patient when attempting to carry out normal daily activities. For example, the free end of the catheter, while attached to IV lines, can catch or snag on objects when a patient walks by or on articles of clothing the patient is wearing. It is imperative that the catheter be prevented from catching on any objects or articles of clothing the patient may wear to ensure that the incision through which the catheter extends into the body is not ruptured or the catheter dislodged from the incision. Furthermore, constant rubbing or movement of the catheter within the incision may lead to serious complications from resulting infection.
The most common method used to support the catheter and prevent movement is to tape the assembly directly onto the patient's skin. However, after repeatedly removing the tape to clean the sterile site and to use the catheter, the patient's skin becomes sensitive to the point that it can bleed and it may also be extremely painful to remove or apply the support tape.
Efforts have been made in the past to eliminate the need to employ medical tape to secure the external portion of the implanted catheter to the skin of a patient. U.S. Pat. No. 5,048,122 to Prieur and U.S. Pat. No. 6,477,710 to Ojoveyi are each directed to a garment to be worn by a person with an implanted catheter line for concealing and storing of the catheter line on the inside of the garment. U.S. Pat. No. 4,578,062 to Schneider, U.S. Pat. No. 4,666,432 to McNeish et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,755,698 to Kagan et al. are each directed to catheter protector harnesses that comprise a belt encircling the body from the chest to the back by passing under the arms and which have at least one strip passing over the shoulder wherein the catheter is enclosed within the harness device. U.S. Pat. No. 4,582,508 to Pavelka is directed to a garment for holding, storing, supporting and receiving indwelling catheters wherein the garment comprises straps to hold the garments securely to a patient's body, a pocket element within which to store the catheter, and fastening means to connect the straps and the pocket elements. Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 6,579,268 to Loining discloses a pouch for releasably securing a free end of a catheter extending outwardly from the body of an individual wherein at one end the pouch includes a releasable clip adapted to secure the pouch to an article of clothing worn by the individual and further wherein the pouch also includes at least one releasable closure and enables the patient to selectively open and close the pouch in order to insert and remove the free end of the catheter from the pouch. While these prior art catheter supports have had limited success in different environments, there remains a need for a catheter support apparatus which can comfortably hold the catheter in a stationary position on a patient in order to avoid irritation of or damage to the incision, avoid dislodging of the catheter, that may be used at all times by the patient (i.e., whether they are wearing clothing articles or not), and that also is able to be rapidly released in the case of an emergency.